Modern vehicles are often equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) systems that are designed to automatically apply the vehicle's brakes when an imminent collision is detected in an attempt to avoid the collision, when possible, or to mitigate the severity of the crash if avoidance is not possible. On vehicles with automatic transmissions, the AEB system can apply the brakes and bring the vehicle to a complete stop without stalling the engine. In contrast, when the vehicle has a manual transmission, if the brakes are applied to slow the vehicle, eventually the engine will stall unless the AEB application is aborted beforehand. If the engine stalls, the vehicle may become difficult to control and will further have to be restarted before being able to drive away.
In order to prevent the engine from stalling, the clutch must be used to disengage the engine from the transmission. This is typically done by the driver depressing the clutch pedal with their foot to actuate the clutch. However, this required driver involvement makes the full implementation of the AEB to autonomously bring the vehicle to a stop inherently less effective. For example, in order for the vehicle's powertrain to remain running after the stop, the driver would have to actuate the clutch during the AEB and the AEB would be reliant on driver involvement.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide systems and methods that allow the AEB system to autonomously actuate the clutch during an emergency braking situation to disengage the engine from the manual transmission. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.